Sadr Suspends His Militia’s Military Operations

STEPHEN FARRELL

Thursday

Aug 30, 2007 at 5:33 AM

The surprise declaration was widely taken as a tacit acknowledgment of the damage done to the Mahdi Army’s reputation by two days of Shiite in-fighting.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said Wednesday that he was suspending for six months his Mahdi Army militia’s operations, including attacks on American troops, only hours after his fighters waged running street battles with Iraqi government forces for control of Karbala, one of Iraq’s holiest cities.

The surprise declaration was widely taken as a tacit acknowledgment of the damage done to his movement’s reputation by two days of Shiite-on-Shiite in-fighting, which killed 52 people, wounded 279 and forced thousands of pilgrims to flee birthday celebrations for the Mahdi, one of Shiite Islam’s most revered medieval saints.

Mr. Sadr’s aides declared an unequivocal end to all militia operations. Ahmed al-Shaibani, the chief of Mr. Sadr’s media office in Najaf, confirmed that this “includes suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers,” a reference to American-led coalition troops.

But Mr. Shaibani, who was one of the major commanders in the Mahdi Army’s August 2004 battle with American troops in Najaf, another Shiite holy city, left open the possibility that militiamen would react if provoked, saying only, “We will deal with it when it happens.”

It is also unclear whether the widely feared group will continue to exert its powerful hold over the black market distribution of everyday necessities in Iraq, including gas, diesel, cooking fuel and other utilities.

Mr. Sadr’s officials claimed that the freeze was intended to isolate and eliminate “rogue” elements of the Mahdi Army that no longer responded to Mr. Sadr’s orders.

American and British commanders have frequently made accusations in recent months that some Mahdi Army fighters have slipped out of Mr. Sadr’s control, operating as criminal gangs or receiving financing and training from Iran to carry out attacks on American and Iraqi security forces. One possible impact of the freeze would be to enlist the help of American forces to weed out rogue elements for Mr. Sadr’s group. In effect, Mr. Sadr was saying, anyone who attacks Americans is by definition violating the freeze and laying himself open to retaliatory attacks.

A statement signed by Mr. Sadr said the six-month suspension of the militia’s activities was intended to “rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image.”

“This decision will have great advantage,” Mr. Shaibani said. “It will distinguish and isolate those who claim to be working for JAM and who are actually not part of it.” He was using the acronym for the Mahdi Army’s Arabic name, Jaish al-Mahdi.

“JAM is a huge and active body in Iraq, but there are some intruders who want to create rifts. We don’t have masked men working with us.”

Many Iraqis said the announcement had more to do with the national backlash created by the television images of thousands of pilgrims who were celebrating the birth of the Mahdi, a revered ninth-century imam, on Tuesday being forced to flee machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenade exchanges between Mahdi Army fighters and the security forces of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government.

The government forces are dominated by the Sadrists’ main political rivals, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed Badr movement. Many fear the Karbala clashes were simply the most public sign of Shiite rivalries between the powerful Sadr and Badr movements, who are vying for power in Shiite southern Iraq.

Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said he welcomed the suspension order but, like many, said it remained to be seen if it would be carried out on the ground. “If it happens it will reduce the violence in the country by a great deal,” he told CNN.

Politicians and analysts said that Mr. Sadr’s action on Wednesday showed that he realized he had overplayed his hand by taking on the security forces and exposing internal Shiite rivalries and that he was now reining in the more extreme elements in his movement.

“This announcement has been triggered by what happened in Karbala,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker. “Everybody is blaming JAM. Karbala was the signal that enough is enough and that they have to purge the people who are not really true JAM.”

But while he said that the discomfiture of Mr. Sadr, one of Mr. Maliki’s harshest critics, could strengthen the prime minister, there was little sign that Mr. Sadr was making overtures to rejoin the government. Sadrist ministers resigned from the cabinet earlier this year because Mr. Maliki refused to set a deadline for the withdrawal of American troops.

“We have to wait and see how they proceed and what they actually do,” Mr. Othman cautioned.

Mariam Reyes, an adviser to Mr. Maliki, said it was a “step in the right direction” and would stabilize the security situation. “It will unveil the components that have penetrated JAM and carry out military activities against the police and army,” she said. Visiting Karbala on Wednesday, Mr. Maliki contended that a curfew had restored order to the streets and blamed “outlawed armed criminal gangs from the remnants of the buried Saddam regime” for the violence of the previous two days. He also removed from command the army general in charge of the Karbala command center.

Mr. Shaibani accused the security forces of causing the trouble by opening fire on pilgrims and Sadrists.

But many in Karbala blame the Mahdi Army for the street battles. Abu Ahmad, a 58-year-old Karbala businessman, said: “We have a proverb which says, if there are a lot of captains on board a ship, it will sink. This is what happened in Iraq. The illegal possession of weapons by the Mahdi Army and Badr, in addition to ignorance, led to the destruction of the city.

“The Mahdi’s birthday is a cheerful event, but it turned into a tragedy,” he continued. He said that Sadr supporters on the City Council had encouraged the conflict and that a weak provincial governor had been unable to deal with the problem.

One Iraqi Army captain in the town, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said: “The crisis started with a fight between Mahdi people carrying weapons and the guards of the shrine. All of a sudden we saw JAM snipers on rooftops of the nearby hotels, and weapons in the hands of pilgrims. It seemed as if they deliberately started the fight to attack the security forces.”

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